


and yours is in red underlined

by downn_in_flames



Series: and when you get me alone it's so simple [2]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, Undercover Missions, also the order of the phoenix is something totally different in this universe, fair warning this is pretty dark, lily evans makes some questionable decisions, which honestly could be the tagline for the novel as well
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-24
Updated: 2020-04-24
Packaged: 2021-03-01 17:40:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,449
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23820961
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/downn_in_flames/pseuds/downn_in_flames
Summary: I'll be the actress starring in your bad dreams.{prequel the second toand all the pieces fall
Relationships: Lily Evans Potter/Original Male Character(s)
Series: and when you get me alone it's so simple [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1706896
Comments: 12
Kudos: 27





	and yours is in red underlined

**Author's Note:**

> this is another little prequel one-shot, this time focused on lily alone and on some underground work she’s doing for this universe’s version of the order (which will be explained much more in depth in the full novel). for this story/universe, i wanted to write a version of lily evans who’s been profoundly impacted by her lived experiences and by getting pulled into what isn’t really a full-blown war but is certainly a dark time - as such, she’s a really complicated (and kinda morally muddy) character, and this fic is all of her messiness at its finest. she may not be everyone’s cup of tea, and that’s okay.

The Vipertooth has the sort of aura that screams showy extravagance, like the patrons inside the bar are largely there to display themselves, to show off just how many Galleons line their pockets and just how large their family's Gringotts vault is. The room is dimly lit by jeweled chandeliers, the counter is made of black marble, and the bottles behind it likely cost more than what Lily could hope to make in a month. A few groups of people are sitting at tables around the bar, huddled closely together and speaking in hushed whispers.

Lily hates most bars - including the ones Marlene, Dorcas, and Mary frequently drag her to - but at least at _those_ , people seem to be having a good time. It's easy enough to get lost in that, and eventually find yourself maybe having a good time as well. But here? She's been here all of thirty seconds, and already, she wants to leave. There's a coldness to the air that makes her distinctly uncomfortable, and it's not entirely caused by how low cut her dress robes are tonight.

But as much as she may want to turn around and leave this overly-posh nightmare behind, her arse remains firmly seated on the black leather barstool. She has a mission here tonight.

"Can I get you a drink?" She's the only person sitting along the entire bar - everyone else is at a table complete with bottle service, so she gets the bartender's undivided attention.

Or, perhaps more accurately, her tits get the bartender's undivided attention.

She would be more annoyed at that, but the fact that the bartender can't help but ogle her is a good sign for the rest of the night. Her dress is _supposed_ to be distracting tonight.

"Do your worst," she says simply, leaning forward a bit more, giving him just a bit more of an eyeful.

He's a massive man, easily a foot taller than Lily and twice as wide, a solid block of muscle with no visible emotions other than a vague challenge in his tone as he asks, "You sure you can handle that?"

She has no intention of drinking much of what she makes him - the drink in hand is merely an accessory to the look. "I think I'll manage," she replies confidently.

"Okay, sweetheart." The man turns his attention to mixing her drink. He must pour at least seven different things into it before shaking it up, and the result is something red and shimmering.

He slides the drink her way, the ghost of a smirk across his gruff features. "Shall I start a tab for you?"

"That would be perfect, thank you. My date will pay for it when he gets here."

The bartender raises an eyebrow at her. "Your date?"

"Well," she swirls the glass between her fingers, "he doesn't _know_ he's my date just yet, but I'm sure he'll be just fine with the arrangement."

That comment earns a deep laugh from the bartender - and she mentally celebrates at that. If she's successfully gotten him to let his guard down, her actual target's going to be a bloody breeze.

She looks away from the bar, her eyes falling on a massive ornate mirror reflecting the entire bar back at her. It takes her a moment to find her own reflection - she's used to seeing auburn hair when she looks in the mirror, not platinum blonde. She's been at this for six months, and yet she's still not used to the final results of her transformation, not used to occupying a skin that's still her own and yet not hers all at the same time.

The heavily made-up blonde staring back at her is a pureblood who spent her school years in Norway before returning to the UK on the eve of her eighteenth birthday. She's confident to the point of arrogance, disarmingly charming, and persistently flirtatious.

Lily likes turning herself into this character more than she probably should.

(It might be due, in part, to the fact that her alter ego has her life together in a way that her actual self does not, but she chooses not to dwell on that too much. When she's dressed up and on a mission, it's easy to forget that she's a full six months out of Hogwarts with no job and no defined career aspirations.)

"My, my, Miss Selwyn, hasn't anyone told you it's unbecoming of a lady to drink alone at a bar?"

She suppresses a victorious smile as she turns in the direction of the voice, locking eyes with Bastien Yaxley, the very man she'd been waiting for.

"Bastien, what a surprise to see you here," she tells him, taking a delicate sip of her drink and giving him a coy look. "Unbecoming, hm? I suppose that means you'll just have to drink with me."

His eyebrows shoot up, and she doesn't miss the way his dark eyes skim over her body as she turns to him. Men are awfully predictable like that.

"Fair enough," he concedes. "But we're going to my _table_."

Of course they are, because sitting at the bar, even at a high-end establishment like this one, is far too proletarian for him.

"Even better."

He extends his hand to her, and she takes it. He wraps an arm around her waist, fingers curling none-too-delicately into her side, and she lets him. Even his touch feels dirty, but she's got to play into this charade if she's going to get the information she needs out of him tonight.

"Put the lady's drink on my tab," he says to the bartender. "And send a bottle of Kelleher's 25-Year to my table, thanks."

He looks up from cleaning glasses and, upon seeing Lily in this new man's arms, exactly like she'd promised him she would be just a few minutes ago, shakes his head and bites back a smile. "Will do, sir."

"What brings you out tonight?" she asks Yaxley innocently, as if she doesn't know the answer already.

"I'm collecting a gift from a friend, so to say," he answers, somewhat vaguely. "And what about you, Miss Selwyn? What drove you to find yourself alone at a bar on a night like tonight? Heartbreak, perhaps?"

She lets out a delicate sort of laugh at that. "Hardly. Just… a healthy sense of adventure, I suppose. You never know what happenings you'll find at a bar on a Saturday night. In this case, I found you."

He lets go of her waist as they approach the small circular table with his name on the placard. It's at the very back of the bar, completely hidden from view. She sits down first, and he very quickly occupies the space next to her, close enough that she can smell the cigarette smoke lingering on his breath. She resists the urge to gag.

"And please, call me Calypso - my surname is far too formal, and we're closer than that, wouldn't you say?" She leans into him as she speaks.

"I would certainly say so," he replies, and his voice is ever-so-slightly strangled - a solid sign that she's having the desired impact.

The bartender comes over, bearing Yaxley's bottle of firewhisky and two glasses. He pours whisky for both of them, which is a bit of a waste really, since Lily hasn't even finished her original drink and has no intention of moving on to a second one, but she doesn't say anything.

"Bastien, can I interest you in a game?" she purrs, as soon as it's just the two of them again.

He takes a sip of his whisky. "What kind of game?"

She gestures to the wizard's chess board on their table. "Chess, perhaps?"

"You can play chess?"

"I've played a little," she lies, scooting around in the circular booth so that they're facing one another instead of side-by-side. "You'll have to go easy on me though."

He seems to find something amusing in that. "I'll do my best."

The truth is that she's played far more than 'a little' chess - certain people at Hogwarts were avid chess players, and they'd sucked her into it as well. By the end of the year, she could give… that person - who, _fuck,_ she refuses to think about - a run for his money, which was really saying something. But it's to her advantage to let him think she knows less than she does, and not just in chess.

He pulls a vial out of his pocket, and Lily watches as he pours a shimmering black powder onto the table, neatly fashioning it into thin lines.

"Want a hit?" he asks, holding the half-empty vial out to her.

She's quickly discovered, running in these pureblood circles, that there's a particular fascination with dragonflame amongst the rich and famous. Apparently, after the whole breathing-fire bit, the drug provides a particularly euphoric high.

It might be the sort of thing she'd be interested in trying, if it weren't for the fact that every time she's in these circles, she's got to be on high-alert - which doesn't really mix well with any sort of mind-altering substances.

"I'll stick to alcohol tonight, I think," she answers.

He shrugs, in a 'suit yourself' sort of way, before quickly inhaling the powder, his next breath coming out as a burst of flame that would almost certainly get them a dirty look were it not for their isolation. And when he's done, he smiles at her in a way that's practically predatory.

She resists the urge to roll her eyes, largely unintimidated by his grin. She knows what he wants from her, and he's not going to get it. But she's got to let him think he's close, at least.

Once she gets the chess board set up, they begin the game. She's white and he's black. A few months ago, she would've thought that reflective of their stances - Lily, on the good side, and him, as bad as they come. Now, the lines are blurred a little - she's not really sure any true 'good guy' would've decided to stoop to her level to get the information Dumbledore's asked her to get. Hell, _Dumbledore_ doesn't know that she's stooped to this level; he knows she's disguised as a pureblood, but she hardly thinks he'd be impressed by the way she's started using sex appeal as a persuasion tactic.

But what he doesn't know won't hurt him, and she has a feeling he'll never ask, not as long as she keeps providing him with the answers he needs.

No, if she were a chess piece, she imagines she'd be somewhere in the middle, a marbleised mix of white and black where the dominant colour can't quite be discerned anymore.

That should probably bother her, but oddly enough, it doesn't. She got smarter and harder when she took on this role, and apparently a part of her conscience disappeared with her naivety.

They parry pieces back and forth for a while - Lily watches as Yaxley makes multiple tactical mistakes that would be all-too-easy to capitalise on, but she doesn't act on any of them. Chess isn't the game she cares about winning.

They're nearing the end of the game when a third person arrives at the table, someone Lily doesn't recognise.

"Bastien," the man says as a greeting, "I wasn't aware you'd have company tonight."

"She can leave," Yaxley answers abruptly, before looking over at her dismissively. "Go powder your nose or something - Poliadas and I have some business to discuss."

 _God_ , fuck him, the arrogant bastard. She tamps down her anger and her desire to put the fucker in his place for daring to order her around like she's some sort of pet, and instead follows his orders, like any good pureblood woman would do.

She leaves the table, but instead of actually going to the loo like Yaxley had suggested, she stops as soon as she's out of eyesight, casting a spell of her own creation so that she can hear their voices from the hall. That's the tradeoff - letting him push her around now, with the singularly focused knowledge that karma will come back for him. She may get hers, but she'll make damn sure he gets his tenfold.

Rotting in an Azkaban cell when there's eventually got enough evidence that he's behind some of the muggleborn attacks seems pretty fair justice.

"You've brought it?"

"Indeed."

There's a wordless exchange that follows, but Lily knows what's being passed between the men - asclepias, a slow-acting but particularly deadly poison that's presumably been used in at least three attacks so far, rumoured to be Poliadas's specialty. But despite knowing the poison they've been using, they've yet to get their hands on enough of it in raw powder form to develop an antidote.

And thus, Lily's quest tonight. Get a sample.

"Your payment."

"Much obliged, sir."

Lily waits a few moments longer, ensuring Poliadas has left, touching up her lipstick with her compact so that it'll at least seem like she actually took Yaxley's suggestion.

When she walks back to the table, he greets her with a smile, acting as if he didn't just talk to her like she was his bitch just a few minutes ago. And she smiles back at him, acting like she didn't mind it.

"I've forgotten, whose turn was it?" she asks, examining the chess board laid out in front of them. Which is, once again, a lie. She knows it's her turn, and she knows that she's one move away from a checkmate.

He leans forward on his elbows, and the glassy look in his eyes tells her that he's definitely downed another drink in the time that she was gone. "Fuck the game. What do you say we get out of here instead?"

She blinks at him innocently. "What do you mean?"

"I've got a room upstairs."

She knows she should say no - being in the bar affords a level of protection that she won't get in a room alone with him. She's made a point to never be alone with anyone thus far - both because the optics aren't great for an unmarried pureblood woman, and because things become infinitely more risky in a one-on-one situation - but Lily can't deny that sneaking a sample of the asclepias off of him will be infinitely easier in a private room.

"Hmm," she thinks aloud, "that would be rather unbecoming of me though, wouldn't it?"

That predatory grin is back. "We both know you don't much care what's considered 'becoming,' my dear."

She matches him with a mischievous smile of her own. "I've got to keep up appearances, though."

"It'll be our little secret."

She pretends to weigh it in her mind for a moment. "Okay."

He gets up, extending his hand to her once again. When he wraps his arm around her this time, it's in a much lower place, gripping her arse possessively.

She has no intention of sleeping with him - she may use sex appeal as a weapon, but she likes to think she's maybe just a _step_ above actually fucking her way into getting information. She's got every intention of making an excuse to leave before it reaches that point.

They go down the same back hallway Lily had hid in earlier - there's a staircase at the back of it, and Yaxley pulls out a key to get into the room at the top of it. She wonders what he'd be using this room for if he _hadn't_ run into her tonight.

As soon as the door shuts behind them, he's on her in an instant, lips insistent against her own as he paws at her body greedily. He kisses with far too much tongue, she notes immediately, and tastes like a mixture of whisky and something burnt.

If she's got to snog a man she doesn't particularly like to get her way, it should at least be an enjoyable experience, goddammit.

She pretends to be more into the experience than she really is, dragging her hands all over his body, seemingly exploring it but really just searching for the pouch of asclepias. She finds purchase on it almost immediately, her hands sliding inside of his robes and realising almost immediately that it's tucked in the breast pocket.

It's all too easy to slip the sachet out and hold it with her thumb and forefinger even as she continues feeling him up inside of his robes, but she quickly realises she's got no good way to get it from her hand into her pockets.

And unfortunately for her, Yaxley picks that exact moment to start trying to shove her dress robes off her shoulders. It's her first mistake in this real-life chess game, and it's a catastrophic one.

As her hands move away from him, to resist his efforts to strip her down, he notices the asclepios in her hand.

"What the fuck are you doing with that?" he asks, a clear edge to his voice.

"I - it just fell into my hand, I was trying to find a way to put it back," she explains.

"Like hell it did," he replies, suddenly angry. "You were trying to fucking swipe it."

"Why on earth would I be trying to swipe some random bag of pois - whatever the hell this is?"

She catches her second mistake of the night just a half a second too late.

"You know what this is. You fucking eavesdropped on me earlier."

Her eyes go wide, and she attempts to play the innocence card. "I don't like these little games, Bastien, or this role you're making me play. You're scaring me."

He doesn't buy it. For the first time, her charm fails. "You're working for the other side, aren't you, you dirty whore? That's why you're trying to take this off of me, isn't it?" he spits out, wand against her neck instantly. "You do realise that means I have to kill you, right?"

Her heart is pounding in her throat, her body pressed up against the wall - she's trapped. And like an animal backed into a corner, she acts on pure instinct, her fingers curling around the wand hidden in the folds of her dress robes.

"It's a shame, really," he pauses to caress her cheek with his other hand in a way that feels distinctly violating. "Otherwise, you'd probably be a delighful fuck."

" _Avada kedavra_."

Lily watches as Yaxley's body crumples to the ground before her, and it takes her a few moments to realise that the curse came from her own lips. She's never used it before, but apparently, the weight of her fury was enough to make it work.

He's dead. She killed him.

She should feel bad about that.

She doesn't.

At Hogwarts, whenever she'd talked about the blood purity movement, she always swore up and down that, if they fell to the same tactics as the pureblood supremacists, then they were no better than the people they were fighting. But she'd been more naive then, more inclined to see the world in stark lines of black and white, a world where it was possible to stay on that moral high ground.

She knows better now. That old Lily isn't here anymore, the old Lily is dead - and for good reason. That moral high ground would mean _she'd_ be the lifeless body on the floor right now instead.

No, instead of feeling any sort of guilt about the situation, her mind immediately pivots to the cover-up, adrenaline pulsing through her veins. She's spent too damn long building up this image to lose it now, right in the middle of everything, because she'd made one small fuck-up. She won't have her cover compromised because of this.

As she's thinking it through, her eyes land on Yaxley's inner pocket, and the sachet peeking out of it, and suddenly, everything comes together.

She casts a Bubblehead Charm on herself for protection before scooping out a sizable portion of poison from the sachet and storing it in her own container. Then she pours a bit more out on the dresser, fashioning it in a thin line, much like how Yaxley had done with his dragonflame earlier. It wouldn't be impossible to believe, what with his drinking habits, that he had a bit too much to drink and confused the two.

She adds a dab of it to his left nostril as well, just for good measure. The fact that she's touching a corpse should maybe be more repulsive to her, but maybe she's just never seen much of Bastien Yaxley's humanity to begin with, so he's not much different dead than alive in that sense.

If anything, it's an improvement. At least now, he's not treating her like a fucking plaything.

She frowns at him, at the lifeless expression in his cold, dark eyes. "Look at this. Look what you made me do," she tells him.

He put blood on her hands. She'll never be able to undo that.

When someone discovers his body, it'll look like an accident, but she knows the truth.

With Yaxley himself handled, she immediately begins to retrace her steps, thinking of anyone who might be able to trace her to this night, to this place, to this man. She's suddenly immensely grateful that Poliadas never saw her face, because that's one less person to worry about.

The only witness remaining is the bartender.

And so with one last cursory glance around the room, ensuring that there's no evidence that she was ever here, she leaves the room and heads back downstairs.

As before, there's not a single soul at the bar - although now, there's not a soul at the tables either. It's just the bartender, wiping down the bar with a dirty rag.

She takes a seat in front of him, and he looks up at that.

"Date didn't work out?" he asks, a hint of amusement in his tone.

She shrugs. "He wasn't my type."

"And what is your type?"

She taps her finger against her jaw, thinking on it for a moment. "Tall, strong, and a bit reserved. Willing to take a shot with me when my night's going poorly."

He wordlessly pulls out two glasses at that, adding two types of liquor to each. He slides hers across the bar, and she takes it, clinking glasses with him before swallowing all of it in one go. At this point in the evening, she deserves a little buzz to take the edge off.

"When do you get off? You've been here a long time."

"My shift ends," he checks his watch, "... now."

She fixes him with her best seductive look. "Well, we'll just have to celebrate that somehow, won't we? We're the only people here now."

It takes all of five minutes until they're both back in the storeroom, kissing heatedly as they both stumble through getting layers of clothing off. And _fuck_ , the bartender - whose name she _still_ doesn't know, for some reason - is infinitely better at this than Yaxley was.

They've only just achieved the bare minimum of foreplay when he lifts her off her feet, wraps her legs around him, and thrusts into her for the first time. She throws her head back against the wall and cries out as he moves inside of her, the sensation so good that she lets herself get lost in it for a moment, lets herself forget the real reason she's doing this.

For a few minutes, she's just a girl who decided she wanted to fuck the bartender, and somehow, that's _better_ than reality.

He comes before she gets a chance to, which might bother her normally, but she really doesn't give a fuck about it right now. Because this exact moment, when he lets her back down to the ground and slumps forward with the exhaustion of what they just did, when his guard is down completely, is exactly what she needed. Her dress robes are hiked up around her hips, but it's still easy enough to find her wand in them.

" _Obliviate_."

It's a bit of a shame that she can't even let him keep even this most recent memory of her, but she knows that the safest option is ensuring that he's got no memory of her whatsoever.

"Clean yourself up," she instructs gently, knowing full well that he's still dazed right now and won't remember her telling him this. But at the very least, she should probably make sure that the memories he _does_ have left of the night make at least _some_ cohesive sense. No one's going to think enough of Yaxley's death to question him, but just in case, she wants her tracks fully covered.

She gathers her things, and double checks her pocket for the small bag of asclepias, the one thing she has to show for everything tonight. It's still there, which is a small victory amongst everything else.

And so she Apparates home, her mission complete. She can't do this again, can't let her guard down and let herself fuck up this badly again; somehow, she doubts she'll survive being found out twice.

* * *

She hand-delivers the poison to Dumbledore the next day, unwilling to send something that dangerous via owl.

"I got this as soon as I could and made an excuse to leave early," she tells the headmaster. She doesn't need him knowing the truth - there's a chance he'll put two and two together anyways when Yaxley's body is found, but she'd rather be spared any of his judgment or lecturing right now. He's stayed in the dark about the true nature of her persuasion tactics thus far, and she has every intention of keeping it that way for as long as she can.

"Wonderful, Miss Evans," he says, examining the powder briefly. "Excellent work, as always."

She thanks him, and as she does, she thinks back to the moment she'd watched Bastien Yaxley crumple to the ground.

Excellent work, perhaps not, but necessary.

"You'll also be pleased to know," he says, tucking the bag of poison away in his desk drawer, "that I may have found something for you along the lines of employment. You've been struggling to find a job that doesn't put you in regular contact with someone who could recognise you, am I correct?"

She nods, but avoids looking him in the eyes. She doesn't like being called out on her failures - especially this one.

He looks up at her over his half-moon spectacles. "You played Quidditch in your seventh year, yes? You were quite a good strategic player, as I recall."

"Yes, sir, I did."

The corners of his mouth quirk upwards ever-so-slightly. "Perfect."

**Author's Note:**

> find me on [tumblr!](http://downn-in-flames.tumblr.com/)


End file.
